Introduction

Naming Changes

Ubuntu Netbook Edition and Ubuntu Desktop Edition have been combined into a single Edition called "Ubuntu".

Ubuntu Server Edition has been renamed to "Ubuntu Server".

Get Ubuntu 11.04

Upgrade from Ubuntu 10.10

To upgrade from Ubuntu 10.10 on a desktop system, press Alt+F2, type in "update-manager -d" (without the quotes), and press Enter. Update Manager will open up and display the message, "New distribution release '11.04' is available." Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

To upgrade from Ubuntu 10.10 on a server system, install the package update-manager-core if it is not already installed. Then execute the command sudo do-release-upgrade -d, and follow the on-screen instructions. Note that the server upgrade is now more robust, and thus will utilize GNU screen and automatically re-attach in case unexpected problems arise, e.g. dropped connection problems.

The same instructions apply to all other editions of Ubuntu (such as Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc.)

Features new to Ubuntu 11.04

Updated packages

As with every new release, packages--applications and software of all kinds--are being updated at a rapid pace. Many of these packages came from an automatic sync from Debian's Unstable branch, while others have been explicitly pulled in for the development of Natty Narwhal.

For a full list of all packages accepted into Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal", please see natty-changes archive.

Linux kernel 2.6.38

Ubuntu 11.04 includes the 2.6.38-8.42 kernel which is based on the latest mainline kernel (stable branch), 2.6.38.2.

This is a major update from the v2.6.35 in Maverick. Some of the highlights include upstream acceptance of AppArmor, support for Intel IPS (Intelligent Power Sharing), removal of the Big Kernel Lock, file system improvements to Btrfs, Ext4, and XFS, and of course the usual driver updates and support for new hardware.

gcc 4.5

The GNU toolchain has transitioned to be based off of gcc 4.5 for i386, amd64, ARM omap/omap4 and PowerPC architectures.

Python 2.7

All main packages have now been built and and are installable with Python 2.7.

dpkg 1.16.0-pre

This is a merge from the community snapshot for multiarch support. This brings us up-to-date with staged changes for the upcoming Debian 1.16.0 dpkg release, as well as pulling in the current version of the in-progress multiarch work from Raphael Hertzog, sponsored by Linaro Ltd.

Upstart 0.9

Upstart has been updated to 0.9.7-1. Upstart is now "chroot-aware", there is support for basic job/event visualization, there are two new initctl commands (show-config, check-config), a socket bridge is now provided, the latest D-Bus version now allows D-Bus services to be activated via Upstart, a manual job configuration stanza, and override file support is now available.

There is a full Lens implementation for applications and files now, in addition to the "Dash" start screen (which will come up when clicking on the Ubuntu logo on the top-left of the screen) for the most common actions, such as searching. Also, icons can be dragged and dropped from Dash to the Unity Launcher.

There are now three session types available in GDM:

Ubuntu: it runs Unity. It requires 3D driver support.

Ubuntu Classic: it runs GNOME with gnome-panel. It supports all video hardware and video drivers.

Ubuntu Classic (No Effects): it runs GNOME with gnome-panel. It is in 2D mode only.

Unity uses the new simplified set of panel indicators. However gnome-panel applets are not supported anymore.

Multitouch in X.org and Qt

The X server includes a prototype of the multitouch input extension (XInput 2.1). The Qt toolkit also includes pre-release support for multitouch.

Network Manager

The Network Manager applet is now compatible with the appindicator protocol and can be used under Unity. It can still work as a gnome-panel applet.

Banshee

Banshee 2.0 is the standard music player now and has been integrated into the sound menu.

Ubiquity

Preparing your computer for Ubuntu is now much simpler, with clearly worded options detailing the exact set of actions that will take place with your choice.

Also, you can now replace or upgrade existing Ubuntu installations with the Desktop CD installer.

Ubuntu One

The Ubuntu One control panel now allows selective syncing. Note: music purchased from the Ubuntu One Music Store is not selected to sync by default.

The Ubuntu One launcher icon now displays sync progress. Important notifications will be displayed through OSD notifications.

File syncing is faster now, thanks to the improvement of scanning which files to sync.

Software Center

Ubuntu Software Center now allows users to "rate & review" installed applications, provided that they have Ubuntu Single Sign On accounts.

Users can also optionally share reviews via integration with social networking services added into Gwibber.

Ubuntu Software Center has also had improvements made in the usability (fully integrated software purchase workflow, improved feedback on install/remove, and alternate search suggestions). The startup time performance has also improved in 11.04.

Ubuntu Netbook on ARM

In Ubuntu 11.04 the dedicated Ubuntu Netbook is only used on the preinstalled OMAP3 and OMAP4 armel images. On all other architectures the Ubuntu Netbook edition has been merged with the Ubuntu's Desktop.

The ARM version is the first one to ship our new Unity 2D interface by default, as there are no free 3D drivers available initially in a default installation.

One click enablement of the TI OMAP4 addons to install the 3D SGX drivers was added back to the image.

Ubuntu Headless

This image is fully set up for the serial port and contains a minimal command line install.

Ubuntu Server

Provisioning servers have been made a bit more easier with cobbler and mcollective now available.

Powernap has been updated to 2.0. Powernap uses a new method to reduce power consumption, seen power savings of around 14% in most cases. It can now monitor user activity (Console, Mouse, Keyboard), system activity (load, processors, process IO), and network activity (wake-on-lan, udp ports tcp ports)

Default dhcpd server updated from dhcp3 to isc-dhcp (version 4).

Eucalyptus is now the latest stable point release (2.0.2) with security and efficiency fixes. (Known bug against the dhcpd server)

OpenStack (nova) in Universe is a technology preview, with a recent snapshot of 2011.2 (Cactus) release.

Ubuntu 11.04 installs in most scenarios on both bare hardware and in virtual environments. Testing of the platform server, and additional server tasks is welcomed.

Cloud images

The Ubuntu Server cloud has a newer kernel inside. See the kernel section for more information.

cloud-init has been updated to 0.60, new features. This feature includes support resizing of / at first boot, adds minimal OVF transport (iso) support and allow setting of hostname when first booting. Rightscale support has been added to cloud-config and cloud-init.

Webscale technologies have been packaged and included, Cassandra 0.7.0, ZeroMQ, Membase, and XtraBackup.

Xfce 4.8

"The Xfce open source desktop is out with its first major update in two years this week. Xfce 4.8 brings the low-resource desktop into the modern era and provides usability improvements across the board. Xfce 4.8 is our attempt to update the Xfce code base to all the new desktop frameworks that were introduced in the past few years," The Xfce development team wrote in a statement. "We hope that our efforts to drop pieces like ThunarVFS and HAL with GIO, udev, ConsoleKit and PolicyKit will help bringing the Xfce desktop to modern distributions."

Menus in Xfce 4.8 are now editable with any menu editor that meets the freedesktop.org standards. The suggested editor is alacarte.

Edubuntu

Ubiquity now has an additional step allowing users to fine-tune which applications should be installed on the final system.

Edubuntu 11.04 ships with the classical Gnome desktop by default but Unity is available as an option in the installer. When selecting Unity, both the 3D and 2D versions will be installed to ensure you'll get the Unity experience even on slower hardware.

WebLive is also directly integrated in the Ubuntu Software Center letting you test the most popular apps without installing them on your machine. Just click the "Test drive" button below the screenshot of an available software.

Edubuntu now ships with Arkose, which provides application sandboxing for downloaded apps.

New software packages in Edubuntu include Pencil, Geogebra, Calibre, LibreCAD, Freemind and Stellarium.

Theming improvements include a new LDM theme when installing LTSP from the Edubuntu installer. The text-mode boot mode now displays "Edubuntu" instead of "Ubuntu". Our ongoing menu refinements include new icons where they were missing, and more consistent case use in menu entries.

For the latest information on Edubuntu 11.04, please refer to the Edubuntu Website

Ubuntu Studio

Installation tasks

The task selections during installation have been updated. The audio tasks have been parsed into two groups: generation and recording. The 'generation' task selections is focused more on synthesizers and sequencers (i.e. tone generation) and the 'recording' task focuses on recording live musician performances.

Kernel

Currently, Ubuntu Studio is shipping the -generic kernel. We are working with the Ubuntu Kernel Team to get a -lowlatency kernel into the archives which will then ship, in addition to the -generic kernel, in Ubuntu Studio. An interim -lowlatency kernel is available in Allesio Bogani's PPA.

Network

Due to continuing problems, network-manager will replace gnome-network-admin. If performance degradation is experienced, please contact the Ubuntu Studio developer via email email or on IRC (#ubuntustudio-devel on freenode).

Package selection

The installed packages have changed. The packages shipped in Ubuntu Studio are more focused to support identified tasks and their derived work flows. Please note that this is a work in progress. If your favorite package is not include, please inform us about it and consider updating the task/work flows wiki page.

Unity

Ubuntu Studio does not currently use Unity. As the user logs in it will default to Gnome Classic Desktop (i.e. Gnome2).

ubuntustudio-controls

We were hoping to have -controls updated for 11.04 but it appears to we will not be done in time. Therefore we will be removing -controls from 11.04 as it's functionality is either not needed or broken.

We plan to continue working on it and hopefully SRU it into 11.04 later.

Mythbuntu

The Mythbuntu-bare (Backup and Restore for the database and configuration files) Mythbuntu Control Centre plugin now has the ability to schedule backups on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Android and iOS devices can now be used as remote controls.

MythTV 0.24 is now integrated into the builds.

Known issues

As is to be expected at this stage of the release process, there are still some known bugs. Please read the known bugs carefully and do not make duplicate bug reports.

Boot, installation and post-install

There is a problem creating a bootable 10.04.2 or earlier USB image from Ubuntu 10.10 or 11.04 system. Booting from the USB can be made to work, but using the workaround of typing "help" and pressing Return. (645818)

The swap partition appears become unusable during some installations (UUID not set). This issue is under investigation. (709363)

The return_to_partitioning function executes and returns as normal, but seemingly fails to properly clean up after partman-commit and initialize partman. (740903)

During boot, on the cryptsetup passphrase prompt, every character typed causes a repeat of the prompt. (566818)

When making the keyboard layout selection from Ubiquity, cannot get the right selection. (656777)

After selecting "Continue testing" rather than "restart now" there is no GUI option to do the restart. (657086)

There are some cosmetic effects that need cleaning up on the installation slideshow (529201, 628159) and some translations are missing (644736, 758739)

On ARM platforms update-initramfs -c does not update the bootloader (701698)

Crash trying to install over btrfs partition in live installer. (759503)

When installing the amd64+mac version, please do not use LVM. Also avoid using multiple linux instances at this time. (745960)

Upgrades from Ubuntu 10.10

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Graphics and display

The -nouveau video driver has had an ABI change but lacked a version number increment. Following Debian we're versioning it as 'libdrm-nouveau1a'. Be aware this can cause difficulties in upgrading/downgrading from PPAs that include libdrm packages.

Desktop

When starting the live session on a system without 3D support, the GNOME panel is not displayed. As a workaround, you can press Alt+F2 and run gnome-panel --replace. On installed systems you should pick the "Ubuntu Classic (No effects)" session in the login manager. (711378)

When switching between windows, Orca does not speak the title of the focused window. (724093)

On ARM images, the Unity 2D version crashes on various occasions. (739386)

Unity may not behave correctly if DRI settings are present in ~/.drirc (745996)

Unity does not yet fully support focus-follows-mouse/sloppy-focus/point-to-click. Enabling this feature may cause unexpected behavior (674138)

The search feature in Unity does not support ibus input (66377) or dead keys (746761); search results in CJK locales are not supported either (745243) - Those limitations will be addressed in an upcoming update (3.8.14) and will be proposed as SRUs

Libreoffice has no minimize/maximize/close buttons. (728927) - An SRU should fix this issue shortly

3rd party lenses may not start correctly at startup. (758839) - A workaround is to restart Unity with unity --replace, while a fix is proposed in an SRU

In some cases, the SUPER+1..9 shortcuts don't work. (768076) - As a workaround, start a terminal with CTRL+ALT+T to fix the problem

Trackpads, touchscreens, mice, and keyboards

The -synaptics driver has received a new acceleration mechanism. Trackpad users may notice a significant decrease (or increase) in acceleration as a result. We are investigating configuration options for this new behavior.

The -evdev driver no longer provides middle mouse button emulation. 2-button mice that need this functionality are quite rare these days. The emulation mode causes a laggy pointer in cases where emulation is not needed, so this change improves responsiveness for all users. If you have a 2-button mouse that needs this, please see the directions for creating a 2-button mouse quirk. (710762)

Trackpads now have kinetic scrolling. If you flick to perform a scroll, then press a keyboard key while kinetic scroll events are generated, unexpected application behavior may result. (728643)

The -evtouch driver is not available anymore due to a lack of upstream support. Users are encouraged to switch to the default -evdev driver. Please file a bug report against the -evdev driver for any broken or missing functionality.

Linux kernel

On certain hardware, enabling power saving for the SATA link can cause disk errors and data corruption. (539467)

On amd64/Mac the main physical screen (iMac display) is detected by the OS radeon driver as output eDP-0, name 'Color LCD', and it is connected but not lit. (542660)

X will flicker, and will dmesg: "[drm:drm_edid_block_valid] *ERROR* EDID checksum is invalid". Intermittently the screen may go dark after one of these flickers. This can be worked around by 'sudo get-edid'. (712075)

On systems with Intel's Arrandale graphics chips, configuring an external monitor can lead to broken graphics (745112)

On certain i965 graphics systems the graphics may experience a very intermittent graphics freeze (768184)

Samba not starting after first reboot. After choosing the samba task during install, smbd will not start after reboot. Users can start samba after login by running: 'sudo stop smbd ; sudo start smbd'. (771305)